Posted on 10/13/2023 6:19:52 PM PDT by rey
“ How L.A.’s bird population is shaped by historic redlining and racist loan practices”
On a recent afternoon in L.A.’s Boyle Heights neighborhood, Christian Benitez and Eric M. Wood stood outside a corner liquor store searching for birds.
The researchers spotted a house sparrow and pulled binoculars to their eyes. “They’re all over the shrubbery in Boyle Heights,” said Wood, an associate professor of ecology at Cal State Los Angeles.
Among the most ubiquitous and abundant songbirds in the world, house sparrows are urban creatures that thrive where people do. They’re resilient, adaptable and aggressive, and are found around buildings and streets, scavenging food crumbs or nesting in roof tiles.
But less than 10 miles to the northeast, in the wealthy city of San Marino, house sparrows were nowhere to be heard.
Instead of the sparrows, ravens, common pigeons and a Cooper’s hawk the bird watchers spotted in Boyle Heights, the manicured lawns and mature trees of San Marino bristled with a very different assortment of birds.
“There goes a band-tailed pigeon right over there,” Wood exclaimed, turning his attention from a red-tailed hawk. They also recognized acorn woodpeckers, a California towhee, dozens of turkey vultures circling overhead, a dark-eyed junco, a mockingbird, an Anna’s hummingbird and a black phoebe.
It was, the researchers said, a vivid illustration of the so-called luxury effect — the phenomenon by which wealthier, and typically whiter, areas attract a larger and more diverse population of birds.
“That huge difference in wealth, separated by only a few miles, really surprised me when I first moved here,” said Wood, who is from Santa Rosa, in the Bay Area.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Stop it. You know better. These are the white chinese, they always live one neighborhood over from the white hispanics.
Memphis is thick with Falcons. We have a breeding pair right in our neighborhood. They were brought in to cull the pigeons, which in their 40 years post introduction period, have done very well. We have thousands of them. Too small to carry off a full grown squirrel, so they cut em in half and haul them off in sections. Murder on snakes too. Pets are too big for them except kittens. Feral kittens don’t last long!
Giving new meaning to Jim Crow?
Well played there ,well played.
Apparently the bigger birds do not like to live in diverse neighborhoods.
Probably heard about the illegals shooting and eating big birds.
In a year of unmitigated absurdity, this may just take the cake.
Even without redlining, it was very difficult for birds to get mortgages ...
LOL
That’s it exactly. Residents of the wealthier areas — i.e., whites and Asians — are far more likely to have well-tended gardens and inviting green spaces, not to mention bird feeders, nectar for hummingbirds, etc. Of course birds will prefer these luxury accommodations to the bleak landscape of the barrio and ghetto.
They need to learn to pay their bills!
Denying a loan to an unqualified POC is “racial profiling.”
Approving a loan to an unqualified POC is “predatory lending.”
See how that works?
“wealthier, and typically whiter, areas attract a larger and more diverse population of birds.”
Causing white flight, I imagine.
Birds go where they are fed the food they like.
Avian Racism.
Idiocy has found a comfy nest.
Is the LA Times trying to compete with the Babylon Bee? If so ... Epic Fail!
House sparrows tend to stay put all year while native songbirds migrate.
They do.
🤭
That was brilliant! My hat is off to you, sir. :)
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